Microsoft’s July Patch Day is live and ready for download, so go grab those updates. I recommend you work on the Windows Kernel-mode driver and .NET one’s first.

According to their summary post, Microsoft released seven security bulletins today, six of which they rate as Critical. The bulletins include updates to fix 36 vulnerabilities in many popular Microsoft products, including Windows, Internet Explorer (IE), Office, the .NET Framework, Silverlight, and Defender. Attackers are exploiting at least one of these flaws in the wild.

I always recommend you apply Microsoft’s Critical updates as soon as possible, but there are two in particular that you should jump on immediately. The first fixes vulnerabilities in Windows’ kernel-mode driver (MS13-053), which was disclosed awhile ago by a Google researcher. The researcher has already released proof of concept (PoC) code for this flaw, and Microsoft is aware of attackers leveraging it in targeted attacks. Next, you should also apply Microsoft’s .NET Framework and Silverlight patch quickly, since at least two of its flaws were disclosed in detail before today’s updates came out.

That’s not to say you should lax-off on the other updates. I think the IE patch is pretty important too; as are any updates Microsoft rates Critical. So I’d recommend you apply all six of the Critical updates today if you can. Of course, I still recommend you test Microsoft’s updates in a non-production environment before pushing them to any critical production server. It may be ok to quickly patch client machines without testing, but you don’t want any surprises with your critical servers.

If you manage Windows networks, you know what time it is… time for Microsoft’s monthly list of security updates.

Microsoft Patch day has gone live, and you can find a listing of today’s security bulletins in their June Patch Day summary page. As expected, they released five security bulletins, one for Internet Explorer (IE), three for Windows and its components, and one for Office. They only rate the IE bulletin as Critical.

I recommend you focus most your attention to the IE update. It corrects 19 vulnerabilities—the bulk of today’s flaw—and most of them could allow remote attackers to gain control of your users’ computers via drive-by download attacks. You should definitely patch it first. That said, the Windows and Office updates are still important. Even though the Windows flaws require local access, and the Office flaw requires a bit of user interaction, they still pose some risk. So patch them too, just start with IE.

I’m sure you’re used to the Microsoft Patch drill by now, so let’s jump right in…

According to their advanced notification post, Microsoft plans to release five security bulletins next Tuesday, which is a rather small number compared to Patch Days of recent past. Their notice warns that the bulletins will include security updates for Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer (IE), and will fix a total of 23 vulnerabilities. The IE patch alone fixes 19 of those 23 issues, and it’s the only update Microsoft rates as Critical (the rest are rated Important).

Based on past experience, I’d bet that the majority of the IE fixes correct memory related vulnerabilities that attackers could leverage in drive-by download attacks.So when Patch Day comes around next week, I recommend you get your IT staff to put precedence on the IE update, then take care of the other four.

Calling all Microsoft administrators. It’s time to spin up your virtual test machines and download, test, and deploy May’s batch of Microsoft security updates. This month’s theme is IE updates; with a focus on a recent IE zero day vulnerability, as well as a continuation of the “use after free” vulnerability theme I commented on last month.

According to their summary post, Microsoft released ten security bulletins today, fixing around 33 security vulnerabilities in many of their popular products. The affected software includes Internet Explorer (IE), Windows and related components, products from the Office suite (Word, Visio, and Publisher), Lync, and Windows Essentials. Microsoft rates the IE updates as Critical, and the rest as Important.

As I mentioned earlier, today’s theme definitely centers around IE. Last week’s security video covered how attackers have recently been exploiting a zero day IE8 vulnerability in the wild—most notably against the Department of Labor web site. One of today’s updates completely fixes this serious flaw. The other IE update continues to fix more “use after free” vulnerabilities, a class of memory corruption flaws that researchers and attackers have focused on lately. I highly recommend you install today’s IE updates immediately, then follow with the Windows and Office updates.

As an aside, Microsoft also released or updated four security advisories today. One of the updates has to do with one of today’s bulletins, but the other three are new. Once you’re finished handling today’s patches, you should check out Microsoft’s security advisory page as well.

Unless you’re new to IT, you’re probably aware that today—the second Tuesday of the month—is Microsoft Patch Day.

As expected, Microsoft released nine security bulletins today, fixing 13 vulnerabilities across products like Internet Explorer (IE), Windows and its components, Sharepoint Server, and a few other Office server products. The worst two, Critical-rated updates fix security problems in IE and the Remote Desktop Client (RDC) that ships with Windows (specifically, its ActiveX control). The vulnerabilities in both these products could help remote attackers launch drive-by download attacks. If an attacker can get your IE or RDC users to visit a specially crafted web site (or a legitimate, hijacked web site), they could leverage these flaws to execute arbitrary code with those users’ privileges. You should download, test, and apply these Critical updates as soon as you can, or let Windows’ automatic updater do it for you.

As an aside, some experts had expected today’s IE update to fix some publicly disclosed vulnerabilities from the recent Pwn2Own contest at a Canadian security conference. In their IE alert, Microsoft credits two Google security researchers for discovering the flaws they fixed today. However, the Pwn2Own IE 10 flaws were disclosed by different researchers from VUPEN. So it appears the Pwn2Own IE flaws are still open issues.

Microsoft also released seven other updates, which they rate as Important. While not as serious as the ones mentioned above, they all fix some relatively risky issues too. In general, I recommend you always install all of Microsoft’s monthly patches as quickly as you can. That said, be sure to at least try and test the server updates before deploying them to your production network.

Next Tuesday, Microsoft will release nine security bulletins, two of which the Redmond-based software company rates as Critical. The bulletins will fix flaws in Windows, Internet Explorer (IE), Office, and some of Microsoft’s server and security software. As usual, they haven’t shared many details yet, but some experts expect the critical IE update to fix the zero day vulnerabilities disclosed at CanSecWest’s recent Pwn2Own contest. Either way, I expect the IE flaws to pose the greatest risk to most users, so you should plan on applying that patch as quickly as possible.

While nine bulletins may sound like a lot, it’s pretty average for Patch Day lately. Nonetheless, you should prepare your IT staff for a busy day of testing and patching next Tuesday. We’ll know more about these bulletins next week, and will publish alerts about them here. — Corey Nachreiner, CISSP (@SecAdept)

Though today’s Patch Day might seem pretty average as far as the number of security bulletins released, it does cover a rather eclectic range of Microsoft products. In fact, a few of the updates affect Mac users as well, and one is even exclusive to Mac.

They rate four of the bulletins as Critical, and three as Important. Many of the Critical issues can allow remote attackers to execute code on affected systems. So we highly recommend you patch them quickly.

We’re coming upon that time of the month again for Microsoft administrators; patch time.

According to the latest Advanced Notification page, our Microsoft friends plan on releasing seven security bulletins next Tuesday. The bulletins will including updates to fix security vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer (IE), Silverlight, and some of their Server Software. They rate more than half (4/7) of the bulletins as Critical, which typically means remote attackers can likely exploit them to gain control of vulnerable computers.

At this point you’re probably quite familiar with the monthly update routine, and know you should prepare your IT team for Patch Day so that they can apply Microsoft’s fixes as soon as possible; especially the Critical ones.

As always, I highly recommend you take some extra time to test the updates before applying them. Lately, there have been a few more reported incidents of Microsoft patches causing issues. You should at least take the time to test the server related updates before deploying them to production machines.

I’ll know more about these bulletins next Tuesday, and will publish alerts about them then.

In an unrelated aside, some business travel has delay production of my weekly security news video. For those waiting, it will come out today, but it may be later in the afternoon. — Corey Nachreiner, CISSP

As expected, Microsoft released a dozen security bulletins, fixing 57 vulnerabilities that affect a range of their software, including:

Windows (and its components)

.NET Framework

Internet Explorer (IE)

Exchange Server

Fast Search Server 2010

According to the summary alert, Microsoft rates five of the bulletins as Critical, which typically means remote attackers can exploit them to gain control of affected computers (usually with little to no user interaction). In general, I recommend you apply these Critical updates first.

In particular, I’d start with the two IE updates since attackers often target users with drive-by download attacks. Also, jump on the Exchange server update immediately, as it fixes an issue attackers could easily exploit with a specially crafted email and attachment—not to mention, your email server is a pretty critical asset.

Though not as serious as other issues, one of Microsoft’s alerts describes a Windows TCP/IP Denial of Service vulnerability, which it sounds like attackers could exploit with a single malicious packet. I haven’t seen this sort of “Ping of Death”-like DoS vulnerability in a while.

As always, I recommend you test the updates before deploying them to a production environment. If you don’t have time or resources to test all of them, at least try to test the server-related updates.

As an aside, WatchGuard’s IPS signature team gets early warning about Patch Day, and will release a new signature update that detects some of the described issues shortly. The have developed signatures for the following Patch Day-related issues:

February looks to be a busy month for Microsoft administrators. According to the latest advanced patch notification, the Redmond-based software company plans to release a dozen security bulletins next Tuesday. The bulletins will fix security flaws in Windows, Internet Explorer (IE), Office, the .NET Framework, and Exchange server. Microsoft rates five of the bulletins as Critical, and the rest as Important.

In the middle of last month, Microsoft released an out-of-cycle IE update to fix a flaw attackers were leveraging in the wild. It appears that update didn’t fix everything in IE since at least two of the upcoming bulletins affect the popular web browser.

As always, we’ll share more about these updates, and the vulnerabilities they correct, next week. You can also expect our IPS signature team to have signatures prepared for any known exploits that Microsoft shares with us. In the meantime, prepare your IT team for a pretty full plate of patches. — Corey Nachreiner, CISSP (@SecAdept)